


if these delights thy mind may move

by ruche



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: M/M, Sexual Roleplay, Sort Of, it's cringe.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:28:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24883078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruche/pseuds/ruche
Summary: His affinity for the common man has become something of a fascination, and then a wholefantasy. If his ghosts were not indication enough, King Dimitri does have quite the imagination.fe3h kink meme fill for "a roll-play in the hay"
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 3
Kudos: 43





	if these delights thy mind may move

**Author's Note:**

> attempt to fill this prompt: 
> 
> King Dimitri is under a lot of pressure. He has a fantasy about about another, easier life; one where simple stablehand Mitya is asked to serve the great Duke Fraldarius.
> 
> Mostly looking for fluff here tbh. Dimitri has no idea how being a stablehand works and Felix may be a terrible actor, but they got the spirit. 
> 
> Ugh. I can't believe

Dimitri’s compassion for the poor is just one reason why Felix would follow him to the ends of the earth.

But like anything else, Dimitri takes this to an extreme. His affinity for the common man has become something of a fascination, and then a whole _fantasy_. If his ghosts were not indication enough, King Dimitri does have quite the imagination.

Felix pushes open the doors of the barn, frowning. The inside’s dusty, top to bottom, but still used to store fresh hay. It’s littered all over the floor, too. Felix grunts.

“Well then. Here we are, _Your Majesty_ ,” he says flippantly, turning to look at his companion, and-- Dimitri frowns back at him. A scowl bordering on a pout. Huffing, Felix glances at how his white shirt casually billows out from his chest, instead.

He’s practically in underclothes. Or perhaps it feels that way, since Felix has grown so used to his five layers of royal finery-- in great detail, since he is the one who takes them off. Sometimes, minutes of undoing golden clasps and polished buttons like a chambermaid with a child, while Dimitri sits there charming and fond.

He will admit there is appeal to Dimitri being so underdressed.

Fraldarius can be warm enough in the early summer months, so they’ve only gotten lucky. Dimitri looks at him with reproach and hope at once. “Felix, please,” he chides, softly. “You did agree.”

“I did,” Felix admits.

“It will be like the opera,” Dimitri says. “You love the opera.”

Felix squints up at the hole in the roof, through which sunlight streams down upon the dust motes. “This is _hardly_ an opera house.”

Dimitri puts a large hand on his shoulder, smiling. That is a sight that Felix is trying not to take for granted, as of late. In open daybreak, it’s like he can see Dimitri more clearly than ever. Ugh. He’s grown too used to Fhirdiad’s clouds and the grim lighting of their rooms. They should spar more often. Hunt more. They should be together more.

“I think we used to play here as children,” Dimitri says. He closes his eye to the breeze that sweeps through the near-abandoned structure. He tied his hair poorly this morning. But it reminds Felix of the wheat they grow not far from here, golden beneath the sun.

“Is that what we’re doing?” Felix asks. “Playing?”

“Play-acting,” Dimitri says sheepishly, and begins to rub Felix’s back. It’s nice. “We can make new memories, just as sweet.”

Felix closes his eyes, too. He has more layers on than Dimitri, which is part preference, and part… playing the part. Is he playing a part? He _is_ the Duke Fraldarius.

Saints, just when he thinks that has stopped being strange-- he shakes his head, gathered hair swooping behind him.

“Well, get to work, peasant, or whatever,” he says.

Dimitri just looks at him. A beat too long, such that Felix feels the immediate need to defend himself from that bewildered gaze. He scowls. “What were you expecting? You know I don’t flaunt authority well.”

A soft smile crosses Dimitri’s face again. He’s bright-- everywhere. His mouth and teeth and gallant chin, his biggish nose that Felix is fond of, his handsome jawline. The dark ring beneath his good eye. The stress lines.

But-- there is an ease there that Felix does not often see in Fhirdiad.

“Oh, but you’re being modest,” his king says easily. “I’ve seen you give orders to your troops. That sort of energy would do just fine, my dear.”

“I would _never_ abuse my power to bed a subordinate officer,” Felix replies, although this is a moot point-- who would he ever fuck but Dimitri, anyway? Tch. “We’d have other things to worry about, obviously.”

Dimitri laughs.

But the point is, he supposes, that a farmhand doesn’t. Have anything to worry about, that is. Just… horses and harvests or whatever. Or that’s at least what Dimitri would like to pretend right now, despite himself.

Dimitri wrung his hands the whole time he was telling Felix about his… fantasy. _“I know that is an idealized view of pastoral life. A disingenuous, privileged oversimplification bordering on dangerous, even. I-- I don’t mean to romanticize their hardships-- those who work the land and keep our houses running have pains I’m sure neither of us will ever understand, and I don’t-- I do not mean to imply--”_

_“Dima, it’s-- fine. Stop talking. I understand.”_

He does not actually understand.

They were born king and lord. But… it is touching, somehow, that Felix remains as he is even in Dimitri’s pointless daydreams. Perhaps a little more grandiose in fantasy than their actual childhood together would ever have Dimitri believe, but.

He looks at Dimitri. Sometimes he thinks he can never get enough of just looking at him. It’s the disbelief. He stands tall, mostly in one piece-- grown into a fine man, or otherwise Felix wouldn’t warm his bed so often. He crosses his arms. It is stupid to pretend, but… he supposes if he’d always known Dimitri’s heart, and he’d seen him prettily heft and carry a few haystacks with those muscles on display, flushed and sweaty with exertion, then perhaps he _would_ have indulged in an affair with a stablehand. If he wanted to.

He wants to, now, anyway. 

“Felix?” Dimitri says uncertainly. He sets a finger to his mouth, pensive. “You know, you really can be rather bossy. Though I suppose, as with any stageplay, there’s--”

Felix grunts. This place smells old and dry. Dimitri is a fool. “Isn’t that _‘Your Grace’_ to you?”

It is so embarrassing to say this. He hates being bound at all by court etiquette-- unless it suits him-- and he especially hates Dimitri being formal with him, always a feeble mask for something worse.

But he can already tell this is different. Dimitri’s eye goes wide and bright and gleeful, subdued but there, because Felix has agreed to try. He also looks like this is the most amusing thing since his stupid joke book, but he lowers his head in a gracious approximation of respect, and titters, “Sorry, Your Grace.”

It’s not the regal tilt of the head that one usually gets from Dimitri. It took effort for him to adopt the stoic reflexes of the strong, untouchable ruler he’s trying to be for Fodlan-- as a prince, he used to bow full-body to their _professors_. Given his eagerness-- maybe he missed it.

“No commoner has that posture,” Felix says automatically, just to say something, as heat gathers at the tips of his ears.

“Oh, you’re right,” Dimitri says, only rising a fraction from his perfect bow. “What if I practiced a lot, then, so as not to seem uncouth in front of the great Felix Fraldarius?”

Felix’s entire face must be red. “As if I would care.”

“People do long to impress you. Your subjects and I are not so different,” Dimitri chirps, “in that we both find you to be an exemplary member of the nobility--”

“You are terrible at this,” Felix says.

“Apologies,” Dimitri laughs, and has enough good graces to look a little bashful. “Being here with you, I feel more free already.”

Well…. He may not understand, but it doesn’t get much clearer than that. Something in Felix’s expression softens. Then Dimitri gives him a questioning look. When he doesn’t get more response than a confused twitch of the brow, Dimitri takes his hand and kisses it.

“You see, you honor me with your attention, my lord,” he says prettily, really laying it on thick. Felix wonders if this isn’t just some outlet to mock his brown-nosing courtesans. He surely hears this sort of drivel every day. Felix, too, but he’s never been inclined to actually stare at it. “And you’re even more striking than the rumors say--”

“Are there rumors?”

Dimitri blinks owlishly. “Of course.”

“Did you start them?”

“You cannot tell me you’ve never heard the servants whisper about how handsome and skilled you are,” Dimitri replies.

_They’re talking about my prestige and wealth, fool,_ he wants to say, but this is all besides the point, and so, “Enough,” he huffs, drawing his hand away and resisting the urge to roll his eyes, or else expire on the spot. He steps backwards, leaning against the sun-kissed wood of the entryway.

Dimitri finally rises to his full height. Somehow, given what he was just doing, the sight warms Felix’s cheeks. He does look lively, much more boyish without being weighed down by royal trinkets and furs. It flusters Felix disproportionately.

“We-- no, I don’t have time for your mooning, understand?” He runs a hand back through his hair, quick, stressed. “A Fraldarius cuts right to the point.”

“The point,” Dimitri echoes, looking more bemused than he has any right to be. Spoiled brat.

“If you feel so free, it’s probably because you’re wearing nothing but rustic hand-me-downs,” Felix observes, nodding his head at them. He unbuttons the first few clasps of his own shirt. “Why don’t you take them off? Entice me.”

Dumbly, Dimitri reaches for the hem of his loose shirt, lifting it above his head. Felix sees a tease of his bare sides, the fine stretch of his abdomen, before Dimitri pauses and stares at him, apologetic. “Ah. Sorry. I’ve no clue how to… entice, Your Grace.”

That isn’t even play-acting. Dimitri couldn’t purposely seduce anyone. Neither of them know what kind of body language and coy signals go into that-- not suited to Felix’s tastes. He just wants to look at Dimitri’s broad back, gleaming in the light of day, he will admit it. He swallows thickly, annoyed.

“Forget it. Would I want you in a barn of all places if you didn’t entice me already?” Felix asks. “Us _high and mighty_ Kingdom nobles don’t just sleep with anybody--”

“Except Sylvain,” Dimitri points out.

“Except Sylvain,” Felix agrees.

“I don’t need you to be creative, just obedient,” he continues dryly. Dimitri smiles a little at that, stripping off his shirt all the way-- Felix is both soothed and excited by the sight, as always. “Prove to me that you’re worth my time.”

“Of course.” Dimitri bunches the white fabric in his big, bare hands, looking uncertain and dreamy with that half-lidded gaze. “I’m happy to do anything in your service.”

Felix breathes out slow. “You always say that, anyway,” he points out, snippy. “‘Do anything to me’, as if you really are some kind of animal.”

Dimitri considers this. “But, now you can do it without considering my status…”

“You,” Felix chokes, about to protest-- but that’s how it is for Dimitri. He never forgets the fact that he’s a king. He’ll carry that crown with him for all his days, from when he wakes up to when he rests his weary head.

Felix sighs and comes off the doorway, grumbling-- “If I considered status at all, I wouldn’t be fucking my king to begin with.”

“Sorry?”

“Nothing an uneducated farmboy like you needs to worry about,” Felix snips, and reaches up to Dimitri’s face. He blushes, as if Felix hasn’t done this-- a number of times before. Well. Because he can do anything, Felix takes some satisfaction in removing the simple black eyepatch that Dimitri favors, holding it in hand as he steps back to look-- the king of United Fodlan, shirtless beneath the sun, near the pastures, his expression entirely open. There’s a small crease to his brow, which Felix reaches up to thumb at.

“Um,” Dimitri starts, his good eye tracking the motion, then flicking back down. “Lord Fraldarius?”

He has observed, in the past, that Dimitri using titles with him does incur… some kind of emotion. In this warmth, in this light, taking in Dimitri’s helpless authenticity when he pretends, it’s more heady and sweet than anything else.

“A commoner has no need to save face, either,” he finds himself saying. “Or to… hide.. anything at all.”

Dimitri’s expression warms. “I don’t want to hide anything from you, Felix.”

“You couldn’t, anyway. Shh.” He doesn’t quite believe Dimitri when he makes light of his lost eye. He always says it doesn’t hurt. Now it doesn’t inspire the usual pang of guilt and pity, just a frankly overwhelming tenderness-- and once he’s gotten his eyeful of Dimitri’s rather simple face, he gestures at the ladder he sorely hopes is not the same one from their boyhood. “Well, up the hayloft with you. We’ll do this like Sylvain and his shopkeep girls, since you’re my dirty indulgence, now.”

Dimitri gives him a look.

“Fine,” Felix gripes, “my servant who I’m madly in love with? Just who is serving whom? Go.”

He sheds an outer layer of his own clothes and keeps both eyes shamelessly fixed on Dimitri’s broad back as he starts up the ladder. This is a sight nobody else should see. Nobody wants to know the savior of Fodlan is just flesh and blood. He has more meat on him these days, due to a combination of attentive palace staff, and Felix and Dedue’s own efforts. He’s always had an impressive body, but now Felix knows that it serves purposes far more tender than combat.

Those simple beige trousers slant on his hips and cling to this thighs, hugging his ass. Felix does not often have the opportunity nor will to really look at Dimitri, as they are always in such a hurry, and Dimitri’s eye is always on him. Felix would rather die than hint at any of the effects imposed on him by the ripple and flex of Dimitri’s muscles as he climbs. A sort of numbness around the mouth. It becomes no less difficult to swallow the disbelief that he’s allowed to touch--

That’s not considering status, that’s just plain disbelief that the idiot survived and ever caught on to how Felix felt. That he ever let himself want anything back. Felix studies the line of his shoulders, the bulge of his thick arms, and Dimitri glances back when he’s almost at the top-- enough to see that Felix has not moved from his spot, as if keeping silent watch over him.

That sounds way too noble for what it actually was.

“Is there something--”

“Shut up,” Felix breathes, aching to skip the foreplay and take advantage of this strange privacy. He lifts his gaze to glower at Dimitri, daring him to say a single thing. He’s seen enough bad operas to know all about punishing commoners for their impertinence or whatever. As if he wouldn’t do just that to Dimitri on the regular.

“Ah.” He hears Dimitri huff, suppressing laughter. “Yes, Your Grace.”

Dimitri pulls him up the last step and onto the hayloft with one outstretched hand. His palm is clammy, and warm, and Felix is not sure why that’s jarring. He regains his footing on the creaky old boards, grimacing at the scatter of hay before his gaze lands square on Dimitri’s chest.

Oblivious, after a moment’s pause, Dimitri lays his white shirt out on a haystack. Felix opens his mouth to protest, but Dimitri stops him short with one gentle smile.

“Ah. It’s okay, if it gets dirty,” he says, standing up straight and gesturing like a valet. Shirtless. Unbelievable. “Please, sit.”

It is only because he looks so innocent and expectant that Felix does. It’s soft enough.

“It’s okay if you get dirty, then, is it?” he asks, jutting his chin at the taller man. Dimitri hesitates, then nods. 

“That would be my every day,” he says, thoughtful. He remains standing, awkwardly, his posture far from regal, weight shifted to one foot and hips at a tilt. He’s quite comfortable like this. That’s jarring, too. Felix’s eyes trace the scars and the shape of him. Then he sits back with a sigh, removing his leather satchel from his person. 

He likes when Dimitri sweats a little. It means that he’s not cooped up in his office. It means he’s getting a dose of fresh air and sunlight. It means, usually, that they are training, or sparring, or having sex, all activities during which Dimitri’s presence is marked and appreciated above all. 

“Tell me about this every day of yours,” Felix says dryly.

Dimitri looks at him blankly. For a good three seconds, he does this.

Felix scoffs, gesturing for him to come closer. Dimitri is obedient. He has these moods in Fhirdiad, too, when he cannot sleep or when he’s had a difficult week-- otherwise he smiles, he teases, he energetically holds Felix down. He’s predictable, yet as fickle as the weather. 

He settles onto his knees like it’s no discomfort at all. Felix looks at his eye. He tries to imagine a world where he would meet Dimitri for the first time as an adult. As it were, he’d come into consciousness with their friendship like a fact of life, up until it wasn’t.

In many ways, they did have a first meeting as grown men. But even then, Felix had foreknowledge, familiarity. His stupid mistake had been thinking that he knew everything he needed to know about Dimitri. And evidently not, since his desire to roleplay a peasant had come as a surprise. 

“Would you know how to wield a sword?” Felix asks, because it’s his first thought.

Dimitri considers this. “Not like you,” he replies, “Not-- well. But the warfront would ensure that every common man see one end of the blade or another… Did Fraldarius mandate enlistment during the war at all?” Slight alarm flickers in Dimitri’s sky-blue eye. “Forgive me; I really should know this--”

“No, we didn’t,” Felix answers easily. He reaches out to free Dimitri’s lion mane from its crooked ponytail. “There was no need to. This territory is full of men who delight in service of the Kingdom. And we would have been much worse off if there were none left to tend the fields.”

He gives the king an impatient look. “It’s your made-up fantasy, Dimitri. ”

“Oh. Then no,” Dimitri replies, glancing aside. “No, I think, in order to be as far away from the truth of it as possible--”

Felix cups Dimitri’s cheek in hand and interrupts him with a kiss. Rather than passionate, it is insistent. Felix derides when cowards turn away from the truth of it, but more importantly, he wants Dimitri here with him. Even if he fantasizes such an impossible world where he’s never touched a weapon. Felix lets his lips linger a moment longer, mostly because his mind is elsewhere, before he draws back with a pointed question already on his tongue. 

“You can ride well, though?” His thick thighs would be unbelievable otherwise.

“O-of course, Fe--” Dimitri shudders, “Ah, Duke Fraldarius.”

Ugh. That’s his _father’s_ title. It still rings to him as such, sometimes, when he’s not ready to hear it. 

That’s a frighteningly immature thought. But-- it doesn’t feel wrong hearing it from Dimitri at the moment. The king is kneeling right in front of him, the wide, warm expanse of his chest rising and falling in the most strange serenity. Felix touches his shoulder.

“And you could probably drive off a contingent of bandits with a pitchfork alone,” he muses, a warmth in his eyes at the thought. He’s startled by Dimitri’s bark of laughter.

“That is _absolutely_ how a civilian would earn your respect,” he remarks, and guffaws again.

Felix glares. Only Dimitri is allowed to be predictable. “I can respect anyone who works hard and thinks for themselves,” he argues, squeezing Dimitri’s huge, stupid bicep. “So what other skills would you have?”

Dimitri looks shy again. “Felix,” he says, a soft protest, and Felix actually hates how Dimitri can express so much with the two boring syllables of his name, how he makes it sound like laughter without being laughed at. 

“Answer,” he demands. “What does Dima do in his spare time?”

Dimitri lifts a finger to his mouth as he thinks, an endearing furrow to his brow. The simple motion and pose make his muscles pop, somehow. “I’d like working the land… I’d be able to help rebuild personally--”

Felix hums, unhappy. “Taking responsibility for rebuilding?”

"I would like to,” Dimitri offers quietly. “But it would be something else entirely, to be wielding the tools and not the treasury budget.”

Felix could very well tease him about all the likelihood of breaking things, anyway. He cannot picture any Dimitri who is not clumsy beyond help at times. If he set out to repair this barn, say, it could just as easily wind up with more holes. Stifling a mean laugh with this on the mind, Felix says, “I think you are more useful where you are. Go on.”

Lost in his thoughts, Dimitri doesn’t even acknowledge the implicit jab. “I could mind the horses; I quite liked that chore when we were schooling. I--I’d know more about plants, like Dedue, perhaps… And I’d be able to sleep outside, in the fields, in the warmer seasons…Is this cliché?”

“Yes. Continue.”

“And… if I couldn’t sleep,” Dimitri proceeds, halting, looking at Felix for approval, ”I could even go to a tavern for… ale and good company?”

“You’re endangering my suspension of disbelief,” Felix informs him. He sighs again, idly splaying his legs out before they start to cramp. “So, in this humdrum boring life, being sexually harassed by a nobleman is the most exciting thing to happen.”

“Not just any nobleman, a Fraldarius,” Dimitri says, too fast and too sincerely, and Felix is distantly shocked to know the manic devotion between their bloodlines could even go both ways. This is not flattering. 

“You do play favorites,” Felix accuses. Untrue, in practice-- Dimitri does his utmost to be an impartial king, enough that Felix thinks they sometimes have public disagreements for no reason at all. 

Dimitri quirks his brow at him, then artlessly and loudly hams his way out of giving that a dignified response. “I just admire the Duke Fraldarius _so_ much,” he coos, knowing exactly how it’ll make Felix bristle and glare. As if to offset that, he finally takes both hands to Felix’s thighs, feeling him through his tights. _Goddess Almighty_ , this whole charade is just his elaborate excuse to simp. Felix’s exhale is a longing hiss, and Dimitri’s smile turns almost mischievous. “Perhaps you’d honor me with tales of your historic victories and exploits, Your Grace?”

Felix grinds his teeth just so he doesn’t gape slack-mouthed at the audacity. 

“Well, I wouldn’t proposition a peasant just to stroke my ego,” he sneers, snatching up one of Dimitri’s big hands because he doesn’t need it on his _leg_ , of all places. He guides the stupid peasant accordingly. “Are we having a passionate affair or what?”

**Author's Note:**

> i have part of the next bit written up but who knows if i'll finish it! pretty good place to leave off. u know they FUCKIN up there


End file.
